Lad mags and consent

12 September 2007

I commented recently about the issue of consent around the submission and publication of photos of women’s cleavage in Zoo’s competition. It appears lad mags like Zoo and FHM have little regard for this concept, but maybe this will change after courts yesterday found FHM guilty of publishing a photo of a topless 14-year-old without her consent.

4 thoughts on “Lad mags and consent”

Oh dear… the poor thing. It’s hard enough when a fully-grown adult has that kind of experience – a 14 year old doesn’t need that kind of exposure.I do see a pattern, however – when I was very young, about 10 or so, men used to ogle my breasts because I had developed earlier. It didn’t stop until I was about 15, when I looked my age and things were more in proportion. Maybe it appeals to the idea that young girls will be so attracted to the older, “wiser” man. It’d be a way to boost sales, I suppose.I don’t know how you can combat this problem. The girl’s signature, perhaps, but the guys could just forge it. Contact details for the girl, maybe, so they could chase them all up? Everything could be manipulated, especially the girls themselves.

This is absolutely disgusting! I would have thought there would have been some legal restrictions on publishing indecent photos of minors with or without the subject’s consent? Without seeing the photo, I think this borders on being close to illegal pornography! Honestly! Poor girl! I hope she receives a huge compensation from the magazine.

Kirsten’s got a point – where the the border between a ‘naughty’ competition and sheer pornography available in supermarkets? Zoo and FHM, I think, are very widely available and are readily accessible to young boys if they so choose. Can you imagine what they grow up thinking about women and their bodies? That they have the right to criticize and judge female bodies? Should there be restrictions like on films for those magazines?

And how about FHM’s justification – that she appeared to be ‘much older’ and they had no reason to believe that the photo was taken without her consent. So what if she posed voluntarily? Even if she did pose for it, she didn’t give permission for the photograph to be published. And she is 14 years old! The girl has been made into a pornstar without her consent.